


Zoom Call Teenlock

by OnlyForward



Category: BBC Sherlock, Sherlock - Fandom, Sherlock Holmes - fandom
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Quarantine, Quarantine Teenlock, Teenlock, fuck i hate tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24706921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnlyForward/pseuds/OnlyForward
Summary: John is the new boy, has been around for a few weeks and made a few buddies but no one too close. His science class gets paired up with the younger year’s one to do a zoom call as they have the same teacher, and lo and behold, there is a Sherlock with his pristine suits and dismissive behaviour. And fuck he might just be a little bit in love...
Relationships: John Watson/Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 50





	1. Chapter 1

THURSDAY

It was just his luck. Just his fucking luck that a few weeks into his second term in a new school they get put in nationwide quarantine by the Prime Minister. Oh this is rich, even for John Watson who was used to things fucking up his life like rain clouds on a game day. 

And he’d just been accepted into the rugby team, as if things couldn’t get any more ironic. Damn Boris for wanting to protect the country from a deadly virus. Damn him. 

John stormed off to his bedroom in a bout of true teenage angst as his mother quietly called after him, “John…” 

Oh the ramifications of this - Harry would have to come home from University - probably with Clara, as well, her girlfriend which would go down so well with their dad. Dad. Dad would be here, the whole time, constantly. In the house, where they couldn’t escape him. And he’d be trapped where no one could come and save him from this wretched home which was actually just the same as the last one. Broken. 

He was lucky, he told himself, calmly. Lucky that he had a family to take care of him (okay that wasn’t working), lucky that he had a home at all, lucky that he didn’t have the virus, didn’t know anyone who had died from the virus. John Watson was lucky. 

It would’ve been nice if he could’ve believed it.

—  
SUNDAY

The weekend is painful. His mum stocks up on food (the shops, he’s told, are chaotic). John himself is shut up in his room to prevent contact with his less amenable parent, and only comes out for occasional snacks and to greet Harry when she arrives (Clara-less) late Saturday evening. As he is stuck only with the comfort of his phone and Netflix, he binge watches a show he watched first when he was 11 and reflects on Friday, which was his last day at school for the foreseeable future.

John is in Year 12: a fresh new batch of A-Level students at age 16 and 17. John is 16 (he despises the fact that he will be so until mid-August, for he hates being the young one). He was close to being put into the younger year but he just scraped past. Anyway, he’s glad he was. He’s got Lestrade and other mates in this year, a solid rugby team and is surprisingly intelligent all considering. 

So maybe he doesn’t have much to weep about in terms of quarantine. His A-Levels have not been cancelled - that’s the Year 13s, and neither have his GCSEs, but he feels stuck in the middle, as though his year fits in the void somehow. And they’re going to have to teach themselves the A-Level content if the school doesn’t shape up and commit to teaching online. Right now all they have is a slightly pathetic homework uploading system, where the teachers put work on and most people ignore it. 

And rugby, oh, how John would miss that. He’d been the captain of the team at his last school because he was pretty decent at it and aggressive at times, but here he was the newbie and the runt of the group. They’d been getting closer, though, he thought, through their practises. Greg assured him they were thinking about asking him to hang out with them soon enough, but nope, because quarantine. 

Ah yes, quarantine, the very bane of John’s existence. 

—

WEDNESDAY

The school had been setting up online lessons through the platform Zoom, now. It had been three days. John has been miserably completing his work on his bed, avoiding Harry and her thesis, and simultaneously working out his dad’s timetable so he could effectively sneak into the kitchen for lunch without provoking the monster. He hadn’t had a lesson on Zoom yet, and for that he was grateful. A new bruise was sporting on his shoulder, a living proof of why this house was dangerous, and although it wouldn’t be able to be seen, it would hurt like a son of a bitch whenever he had to move it around.

There was only so long he could pretend to people that it had been rugby. 

But at the end of the day an email pinged through on his school account and he rolled over to look at his laptop, chewing slowly on a packet of crisps.

Dear John, 

Our school prides itself in being worthy and exceptional at educating all of our students no matter whether in school or learning from place of residence. It is for that reason we have decided to set up learning via Zoom, with live action of the teacher so it is just like in class….

Okay, that was dull enough. Need not read on. Another one pinged through from his Chemistry teacher. 

Dear Class of Year 12,

As I’m sure you are aware, you are now going to be receiving Zoom calls from all of your teachers. This includes me, naturally, so I look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning at 10am. 

Also I regret to inform you that it will not just be our class. Simultaneously I teach the Year 11s at 9am and the school has decided we are to teach the Year 11s who are continuing Chemistry at A-Level in conjunction with your class. They will not be expected to keep up with the work and we are continuing on with the syllabus as normal, not restarting the year. This is simply booster tasks for them and I will not let it interfere with your learning. 

Sincerely,  
Mr Halesworth

Great. Just great. They’d be sharing a zoom call with the younger year, or as most people liked to refer to them as, the twats. Half of them were druggies, anyways so John didn’t tend to give the year even half a notice. Why bother? They didn’t matter to him. He had his own people to worry about. 

Like the captain of the rugby team, who happened to be dickhead Mr Halesworth’s son. Olly Halesworth was without a doubt, a carbon copy of his father in meanness and power but not in the sense of ambitions - Olly’s doing PE, Geography and Drama for his A-Levels. His drills make John want death each time he completes them - that’s not how you motivate a team, that’s how you make them despise you. It’s clear that Olly knows little about actual leadership and teamwork, just how to look good and play well (albeit not fair). The headteacher had some influence in him being Captain (personally, John thinks it should be Lestrade even though he’s slightly biased). Lestrade, after all, didn’t have his father at the school. Greg didn’t even have a dad, but he was still a much nicer leader than Olly. Their drills had been exceptionally less painful when Olly was ill and Greg took over that one time in October.

But what did John’s opinion matter? He was new and didn’t have any sway with the team aside from his friends. Maybe if Olly got injured, then Greg could be Captain one day. Or even him….

Why was he bothering to think about rugby? There was no point, anyways. It wouldn’t be on...well for months if John’s mum was right in assuming so. Quarantined, with his family, with no rugby, no friends and constant school Zoom calls. Great. Just fucking perfect.


	2. Chapter 2

THURSDAY

John didn’t like getting up at 8am, but he had to dredge himself out of his bed to get a bowl of cereal and look vaguely presentable before the first Zoom with the year 11s who definitely didn’t deserve to be there.

He knew the type. They’d interject with questions all the damn time to attempt to follow along and treat it with disrespect. Granted, yes, Mr Halesworth was a hardcore dick of a teacher with his poncy words and unhelpful scrawl of a handwriting but even he didn’t deserve the torment of pathetic Year 11s who don’t even have to do their GCSEs. 

God, A-Level content is going to hit them super fucking hard. 

He gets a text from Greg whilst he’s eating his cereal. Well, actually he reads the text during his breakfast. Greg sent it at about 2am. His idea of a sleep schedule during quarantine has essentially gone to hell. John, who typically stays up late, has somewhat retained his routine. Otherwise he’d just sleep through his alarm and the loud noise...well, loud noises weren’t typically welcomed in his house.

Have you got the youngers in your calls as well? Going to clog it up don’t ya think?

John scoffs and nods silently along as he reads the text, composing a quick agreement text and sends it, realises he made an error and quickly correcting it with an asterisk. Fucking autocorrect.

He waits a minute before clicking on the impending Zoom call - that’s a lie, he actually waits two and a half until he’s certain other people have joined and he won’t be alone with Mr Halesworth. He’d learnt the rules of online school, and he wasn’t about to be caught in that trap. Nope, he’d leave that to Mike Stamford, their local suck up who had a knack for getting the seat closest to his favourite teachers and had done since Year 7. 

“Ah, here we are, more people are arriving. Right, so I haven’t sent the link to the Year 11s yet so I just wanted to remind you that they are joining,” the teacher is explaining and John rolls his eyes off camera. As if they’d have forgotten. “Please be mindful that they might be slightly lost as to what we are doing.”

And then there is audible quiet as Mr Halesworth clicks away and sends an email with the zoom link. John desperately wishes, suddenly, he had a proper friend in this class he could be texting to moan about all the shit happening. But no - there’s just Mike and his beaming smile of nothingness. He’s too nice, and you can’t text someone who is too nice because they’ll never talk any shit about anything. Even Mr Halesworth. Even Olly Halesworth, who is the biggest piece of shit ever.

And soon the Year 11s filter on, and John doesn’t even want to look at them, so he doesn’t. Weird - isn’t it - if he’d been born a few days later then he’d have been in this year, with them. 

Well, maybe they wouldn’t have moved house if he’d been in a different year, but the same principle applied.

He shuddered, thinking it through. Being in that year? With all the druggies and not having done his GCSEs and still having to do work? Nah, he’d rather not. They could smoke all the weed they wanted, he’d be a doctor if it was the last thing he could do on this planet before saying Adios to it.

It takes all of five minutes before he’s interrupted, but not how John expects it to happen.

Mr Halesworth is in the middle of drawing a benzene ring on his shared screen, his mouse clicking away as he does it and John is dutifully copying it down. 

“Wrong.” The monosyllabic voice is baritone and melodious, but in the sense that it could turn gentle and soft if it needed to. It’s not one that John recognises, and people barely interrupt Mr Halesworth, let alone to tell him he’s made a mistake.

So John looks up to see the green box highlighting who was speaking and the camera is faced on a Year 11.

Not just any Year 11, though. This boy is the epitome of beautiful - he’s like a Greek god in stature, alabaster skin contrasting with black (or is it very dark brown?) curls that he focuses on for a split second before going immediately to his Cupid bow lips - yes, John knows what Cupid’s bow lips look like, he’s read enough romance novels in his early teen years thank you very much.

Then the camera switches to Mr Halesworth and John bristles with annoyance as though Zoom has personally offended him. He wanted to stare at the Year 11, the blissful pleasing to the eyes that had presented himself and was now whisked away, but instead he gets the teacher’s bushy mustache? Not a fair trade.

“What do you mean, wrong?” Mr Halesworth’ tone is suprisingly flat, suggesting he’s used to this kind of behaviour.

And then the boy comes back on screen, and he himself seems to be plucking his feathers in annoyance at Mr Halesworth’s rebuttal. “It’s wrong. The benzene ring is too wide in electrophic substitutions mechanisms. The ring should be ⅔ of the diameter long, how could you even make that kind of mistake? Aren’t you supposed to be a chemistry teacher?”

John’s mouth is touching the ground, it’s so wide. 

He could hear a pin drop. The boy is blinking as though waiting for a response and John drinks in his appearance again, hoping it won’t disappear. He’s wearing a suit (who does that, it’s school?!), with a full on black blazer and buttons slightly undone, and his shirt is purple and god John can’t. He just can’t even with this boy.

Beautiful and a genius? Fuck, maybe he should start paying attention to Year 11s. Or maybe just one Year 11.

Mr Halesworth lets out a deep sigh and goes to correct his mistake - sorry, what? The boy gives him attitude, corrections, basically calls him a fucking imbecile of a Chem teacher and all he gets is a sigh?! Who the fuck is this dude and why does he get the free pass on punishment? 

But soon the Year 11 disappears into distance, Mr Halesworth answering another question and John quickly remembered he’s supposed to be learning and writing this stuff down, and the boy with his curls and suit and genius disappears back into the depth of the other students and John doesn’t even know his name.


End file.
